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Late Holocene Coastal Plain Stratigraphy and Sea-Level History at Hanalei, Kauai, Hawaiian Islands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

R. Scott Calhoun  and
Charles H. Fletcher III
R. Scott Calhoun
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, Department of Geology and Geophysics, 2525 Correa Road, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822
Charles H. Fletcher III
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, Department of Geology and Geophysics, 2525 Correa Road, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822
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Abstract

Fluvial, marine, and mixed fluvial-marine deposition on the coastal plain of Hanalei Bay on the north shore of Kauai, Hawaii, records a middle- to late-Holocene fall of relative sea level. Radiocarbon dating of the regression boundary preserved in the stratigraphy of the coastal plain documents a seaward shift of the shoreline beginning at least 4800–4580 cal yr B.P. and continuing until at least 2160–1940 cal yr B.P. Marine sands stranded in the backshore and coastal plain environment are buried by fluvial floodplain and channel sands, silts, and muds. In places, erosion at the regression contact exposed older marine sands thus increasing the hiatus at the regression disconformity. The shoreline regression is best explained as the result of a fall in relative sea level. The age and elevation of the cored regression boundary at sites that have not been influenced by erosion are consistent with a middle- to late-Holocene highstand of relative sea level as predicted by geophysical models of whole Earth deformation related to deglaciation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , January 1996 , pp. 47 - 58
Copyright
University of Washington

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